Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, has said that existing attempts by corporations to create a metaverse will lead nowhere, as people still don't "know" what it should look like.
According to him:
"The metaverse is going to happen but I don't think any of the existing corporate attempts to intentionally create the metaverse are going anywhere."
Buterin has said this in response to developer Dean Eigenmann, who has pointed out the metaverse is a viable concept, but is unlikely to be implemented on the basis of those tools in which "venture capitalists are now pouring money."
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Other eminent members of the community have also taken part in the discussion. For example, Ribbonfarm blogger Venkatesh Rao has emphasized the market is in a unique situation where reliance on hardware puts the big players in a winning position.
Buterin has responded:
"My critique is deeper than ‘Metaverse Wikipedia will beat Metaverse Encyclopedia Britannica’. It's that we don't really know the definition of ‘the metaverse’ yet, it's far too early to know what people actually want. So anything Facebook creates now will misfire."